Essential reading for Progressives

Trump — An International Embarassment

The recent G-20 meeting in which President Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin did little to re-establish U.S. leadership and credibility. If anything it further isolated us from our traditional European friends and moved us toward some kind of alliance with a long-time adversary, Russia.

Trump once again threw tradition, diplomacy and long standing friendships onto the trash heap as he spent more time being critical of the United States than he did promoting our leadership and taking a moral moral high ground. Everyone knows he scrapped the U.S. support of Global warming initiatives. To many of our long-time allies that was a shocking and irresponsible move but it was only the beginning. enough to

In an unprecedented move Trump met with Vladimir Putin without his national Security advisor being present, which had the immediate effect of diminishing the importance and influence of former Army General H.R. McMaster. HR, as he is known, had a reputation for being able to stand up to the strongest bullies. Obviously he had never met Donald J. Trump because that reputation is history.

In another highly irregular and irresponsible move, the President verbally attacked his predecessor and therefore his own country, on foreign soil, a move that has always been forbidden. Past Presidents have always selected to use the ocassion to promote our nation, rather than give strength to America’s enemies. Then, as he has done so many times in the past, he publicly rejected the findings of his own intelligence agencies regarding Russia’s involvement in the 2016 American Presidential election without offering an iota of evidence to justify the slap. And — he has continued to maintain that he would have won the popular vote had it not been for millions of illegal immigrant votes. All of this communication came from Trump while in Europe in the form of Tweets, comments, speeches and responses to questions. He has praised Russia and had little good to say about the country he represents. All of that and we still have no idea what really took place in the Putin meeting but Vladimir seemed happy and that is always a very bad sign.

Combine those few examples with his erratic behavor the past six months and it adds up to a nation and world sufferiing the effects of extreme shock, disappointment and bewilderment. No one knoiws anymore just what the United States stands for.

President Trump is making it increasingly more difficult for Americans to trust him to have their best interrests at heart. He is an entire terabite hard drive full of contradictions, lies, deceit, and obsession with Hillary Clinton. He seens unable to go anywhere without taking a shot at the woman he defeated for the office he holds.

I am nowhere near his income bracket and would never be invited to a function in which he was included but if I was I would refuse. He isn’t the kind of person I would want to be seen with nor would I allow my children to befriend him.

Before the President left for this latest trip, he purposely got into a dustup with the two hosts of “Morning Joe” on MSNBC. It was a perfect example of how an undisciplined mind works.

Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinsky have been very critical of Trump, seriously hammering his stands on issues and where his leadership or lack of it, is taking the country and — yes, they are biased. They make no bones about their disapproval of his performance. Usually, though, Presidents dismiss that kind of criticism and never say a word about it. They maintain the dignity of the office and remain above the fray. President Trump, however, doesn’t know how to sty above the fray. Actually if there is none he will create one. In the case of Mika and Joe, however, he responded not by defending his administration but by launching personal attacks. His comments about Mika Brzezinsky were beyond gross, they were the ramblings of a schoolyard sexist bully who has no verbal defense for his positions so instead he attacks his adversaries with vile and profane language.

Not since the disgraced Nixon Vice President, Spiro Agnew, has anyone had such a vendetta against the press but at least Agnew had a vocabulary. “Nattering Nabobs of Negativism” had a ring to it. He, of course, had to resign as did his boss. The Trump supporters will tell you Obama was the most corrupt in history (no one charged, indicted or convicted in 8 years). Nixon and even Reagan far exceeded our first African Americam President in law breaking … and every other President as well.

Abraham Lincoln was much smarter than our current president. He had a country divided by war and hundreds of newspapers firing broadsides at him daily, but he held his cool, picked his battles and ultimately won. This Link explains. https://tinyurl.com/y9tnd34e

George W. Bush, who was not my favorite President, showed far more class than Trump. Bush was constantly attacked throughout his eight years in office and, for the most part, rarely retaliated.

Today people all over the world are laughing at us. Many are even rioting in objection to either a Trump visit or a Trump quote or policy. Analysts say that at first foreign leaders viewed Trump as an ideologue with whom they disagreed until they determined that he is nothing more than an ill-prepared newcomer to the world stage, with uninformed views, a very thin skin, no sense of propriety and no respect for the office he holds. He never reads, has a limited vocabulary, no vision and takes pride in verbally beating up on women, minorities or anyone else he deems as vulnerable.

How can anyone in the world, especially Americans take this man seriously? His mind is like that of a post pubescent boy who has no original thoughts, watches only “looney Tunes”, possesses a complete collection of “nudie” magazine and makes decisions driven by hormones.

How else do you explain a grown man who was either seeking or holding the highest office in the land when he made hundreds of public statements like these:

“I’ve said if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.”

“My fingers are long and beautiful, as, it has been well documented, are various other parts of my body.”

“Look at those hands, are they small hands? And, [Republican rival Marco Rubio] referred to my hands: ‘If they’re small, something else must be small.’ I guarantee you there’s no problem. I guarantee.”

“My IQ is one of the highest — and you all know it! Please don’t feel so stupid or insecure; it’s not your fault.”

“You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything….Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”

“If I were running ‘The View’, I’d fire Rosie O’Donnell. I mean, I’d look at her right in that fat, ugly face of hers, I’d say ‘Rosie, you’re fired.”

“You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her — wherever.”

“Look at that face! Would anybody vote for that?”

“The point is, you can never be too greedy.”

“You know, it really doesn’t matter what the media write as long as you’ve got a young, and beautiful, piece of ass.”

He’s (Senator John McCain) a war hero because he was captured,” Trump said during an appearance in Iowa, “I like people who weren’t captured.” (How else do Americans wind up in other country’s prisons?

If you can read these quotes coming from the President of the United States and not be embarrassed or at least disappointed then your view of the world is totally out of sync with the majority of people in the world who expect the man in that position to be dignified, gentlemanly, and Presidential. After all, he represents a nantion of 330 million people. If you can accept that behavior and tell your children they should look up to him then it is likely that you also believe NASA has a colony of child slaves on Mars.

It is not only his statements that are objectionable, his actions are even worse. He would gut Medicaid leaving millions without healthcare, among them pregnant women, children, the disabled and the elderly. He would end the Affordable Care Act with no replacement that would doubly affect those same people. He seeks monstrous tax cuts for the rich at the cost of healthcare for the poor. He is slashing the budgets that provide clean and water, food stamps for the working poor and prescriptions for the elderly. If you feel as though everything is unraveling, that’s because it is and his supporters are totally blind to his insensitivity and cruelty.

Mr. Trump is not worthy of carrying Abe Lincoln’s boots never mind sitting at his desk. I know not what will happen to him or our country but I fear for us because this man is unravelling all that our forefathers so carefully wove together. If our republic fails, the failure will rest on the shoulders of Donald Trump.

My negative response to the President is also personal. I am a senior citizen and a heart transplant recipient. Anti-rejection meds and the other drugs I take cost a hefty sum each month. Under the Affordable Care Act the so-called “donut-hole (coverage gap) was set to close in 2020. If ACA is repealed the donut-hole will become a canyon and many seniors will again have to decide between food and medicine. Somehow I don’t think America is supposed to be that way. I cannot believe my conservative friends would choose to allow seniors or anyone else to die in order to provide the super-rich with tax cuts.

Some of you will respond to this but few, if any, will refute what I’ve said. They will point the finger at someone else, accuse me of being un-American, or try to bully me into submission. Well, you can’t. Our President is a blot on America’s image and because of it we will all suffer.

At this very moment Mr. Trump is faced with a genuine crisis that only he can solve or make worse. North Korea now threatens us with an intercontiential ballistic missile that can hit Alaska and in a short time the American mainland. He must find a way to defuse this situation. No one will come to his rescue. All of us have to hope and pray that he will for once in his term exercise restraint and toughness at the same time. Americans will support him if his words and actions make sense to them. If he fails in this most critical mission I shudder to think of the conxequences, I hope his past behavior is not an accurate predictor of the future. I have little confidence, though, in that hope. He is too easily angered and anger almost always generates irrational behavior.

His words and actions of the past five months are indefensible but they are explainable. As Lincoln said, “You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry.”